Sanvad

Platform where I will put my random thoughts, I guess I will find some meaningful text after sometime.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Late Posts!

From last 2 months I was visiting differernt places for differnt reasons. That's why could not post here. But i was writing up and saving them at my laptop. So just posting all those old posts.
Hope this wont be practise for me.

Some Promising areas for Business Part II

As we started the discussion on ageing effects in developed nations, I lost touch with outside world information (basically internet) since I started traveling in interior parts of India. Here u get very poor connectivity with normal dial up. With this speed, you can barely check your emails leave apart reading a article or going through current stuff. Anyway coming back to main discussion, there are two major effects in terms of ageing. You loose a major chunk of population who was efficient in their jobs, so new job opportunities are created for expert people and since these old people have plenty of time to kill as well good money. These people expect fixed gains without major risks even if the returns are low. Current house development boom in Lake Tahoe area at least is caused by these retirees from California. Since they can sell the houses purchased for pennies and then sell them at after retirement for millions. May be this is too specific, but if we dig into the housing boom we will find funds coming from this major source. To make a natural analysis of this, let’s think rationally. If I am a retire, got some major money coming in which I want to invest in safe but fixed income fund where would I go? I should either think of some mutual funds but since mutual fund market is over flowed with money I am not quite sure of handsome gains there, then real estate market is hot, and with exception of some high risk areas that market is not gone go down. The worst could happen in this case is that I would loose agent commission and end up selling the house for the price I bought it. Now the market is soaring very steep in these old age popular areas. Old age popular areas mean the areas where old population wants to move in. What is common in areas such as San Diego, Miami, Orlando (or for that matter I guess whole Florida), have common. These are old people popular destinations. If someone wants to say those are naturally beautiful places with nice quite sea and towns I would say Oregon is better in those terms but oldies are not moving in there so market there is still pretty stable. It might have some boom such as normal real estate market in USA but not more than that. Now another factor, what should these people do with their time, why not make some golf clubs where these people live. Since they got plenty of money to spend too, they can afford this pretty easily. Why not make some card games and gambling opportunities where these people will fill like champions while loosing the money. Now, let me say this, being from Nevada does not make me to say something like this. But if you watch the popularity of Texas Holdem or any kind of poker game, immaterial if it is played at an Indian casino or online, has lot spectators as well as participants. Now how come, all of sudden such normal poker games gets famous. If I am looking for business opportunities in this sector, then I would say two things. First create some solid business investment scheme which will assure of safe money at particular amount of interest and second what it is called in Indian software industry as body shopping. Ship the person with particular skills for particular amount of time. Now, software industry assumes these roles for particular amount of time but in open market this could be done at every level. Lot of these jobs may be going through BPO market but stocks of companies like AppleOne or these stand by employment companies are gone go up. No one wants to bear the cost of employee health insurance, retirements etc. No one is ready to pay for that either. Though we are seeing the job market growth going on, I think that will be short time trend. Demand and supply chains in terms of human skills will be more powerful business. I think that is the reason companies like IBM are making strategic shifts from being a products company to become a service company who would provide these services. But I will say this, companies like size of IBM are not good for this market since they can kill every new player and charge the market at their own rate which will help to stop this trend. Another thought comes in my mind here is that this market is not high investment market, if I got good contacts and ability to keep these good people I can survive in this market. Now getting back to original discussion, both these opportunities could be profitable for Asian countries where interest rates for borrowing are still high, where lot of infrastructure spending is still pending and there are millions of people which are not ready to invest in high risk market. If I can take example of India, being a developing nation, everybody is investing in industry and naturally expecting from government to invest in infrastructure to facilitate the growth. Now politicians lacking vision are eating out from government money with short term gains. It is the classical example, where a farmer is killing is hen to get all gold eggs once but eventually ignoring the gains he is going to get. But I might stop short, on making comment on this being very sensitive subject for me. In short, whatever government has opened for private sector to invest in is growing (for example power generation, telecom) but what ever is still restricted is not. (Roads, water supply). If someone can make use of these opportunities then it will be best business to go in. I am quite sure either its India or Brazil its gone take a lot of capital at first term to invest and a solid political background to come in such business but I think it is possible with foreign investment. I think it is not at all possible to attract a solid investment from these retires for a dot com or any new technological boom. Proving gains first hand for short time will attract lot of investment. Rather than buying circuit city which is in a business sector over populated players I would invest in something like this. Let’s continue this discussion.

Pistons and Spurs!

Pistons and Spurs:
I was guessing that series will end in game 5 since spurs started with 2-0 lead and had lot more depth than pistons. But turned out that series was extended, though I was not able to watch both game 3-4, I heard that the credit mostly goes to sloppy play by spurs and inability to capitalize on three point range. Today I was able to watch game for first 10 mins and then last 40 mins (thanks to power cut here in India), I found one thing, pistons gained lot from those 2 games they won. They were right there until end if Ric could made a smart choice rather than shooting by himself or I can say Larry could have draw a better play then they had nice shot of winning the game. It was just a one point difference with 4-5 secs and you are into 5th game of final series, you can afford to play like a normal game. I also suspect that much of the credit of Spurs turnover goes to officiating in game 3 and 4. After game 2, ratings were down, seemed that it was turning out one more uninteresting series but after some thought I think I was wrong thinking that way. If that was the case then last year final series would have been different. Lakers could have started game 6 at home. (May be they were to busy in internal fighting that officiating did not able to pull that out either and there are other zillions reasons such as injured Malone but this post is not about that..god stop writing about Lakers). Now everyone thinks that Spurs will win championship mostly in game 6 but I guess it will go up to game 7 unless, Pistons hang up their head. Anyways, next year is gone be more interesting that this year since Larry will not be coaching pistons and I don’t think that bunch could be awaked by anyone else other than LB. Since Heat will not have a single good competitor in East, I guess only playoff matches to be watched will be on Western Conference. Or shift Seattle or SUNS to East, we have plenty of talent of West.

Sarkar!

Sarkar:
Today I watched another hindi version of ‘God Father’. The title lines by director were very pragmatic, sounded like this “Like every aspiring director, this is my version or tribute to God Father’. I just hoped Ramu should have been true to his words. The movie is sluggish, with unwanted details. For example, he has changed the script for modern hindi films, killing big brother by younger one rather than he is getting killed by the rival gangs. I don’t think that was something audience ( at least audience who has watched God Father before) looks forward to. I was thinking at the same moment what I will incorporate in this script new. I will not do anything different with core concept of don utilizing his power for people, a parallel system created by void of capable system. Something which government does not want but has to live with it. This time, I will definitely not show a poor father or inspector who complains about rape over his daughter. In fact while watching this movie today, I got sense that best version of this core concept was depicted at best by Naykan not by God Father. Though movie has hindi cinema style dramatic moments which could have been avoided Kamal Hasan has shown best performance by far. Marlin Brando was unique in his style and none of these version ever tried to copy him, in fact I can say that in God Father, Marin Brando made the movie first father oriented rather than script giving importance to son, but every other time due to script first father got second position in films. Sarkar was not even exception for this rule even if Amitabh was enacting as first father. Abhishek dominated whole movie beyond anything. But I think it came with the help of script. In Naykan, they changed the script so the son was not at all visible on screen. That might have caused it to be more powerful. Rather I will say this, Naykan was not diverted from core concept but still made best changes with the script ever possible.
More about the movie experience at theater, it was tremendous. People love Amitabh, I think he is the only actor in hindi movies ever, who gets so tremendous response at this age. This movie response will be more about this following and people want to see him with his son. Legacy with such great script, expectations are sky rocketing as well as no matter what ever quality it has, if u are die hard Abitabh fan then u got to watch this one.